On August 09 2013 01:44 Sumadin wrote: I think the reason we try to make the marauder so many things is because the other unit fails to take their role in those things.
The ghost is kinda excused in that it comes late into the tech tree, but it still isn't there. Don't get me wrong i actually like shock alot, but right now it just sucks so much. You shoot and the missile reaches the unit like next week or so. You move in for the oppotonity but then you realise the effect lasts like a second, so the siege tank is already back. The concept for a back line sniper is there, just needs some adjustments on the numbers.
And then there is the reaper... i talked about this in the past, but it just doesn't have the raw stats to be a viable 2-supply unit. We will see if anything changes with the new improved blast charges.
reaper is a raider, not a fighter, you are not supposed to mass them, so supply does not matter much. The ghost is unexplored, i would kinda see an early ghost or 2 work in certain timings if the toss decides to defend with immortals, rendering them useless for 10 seconds. On paper the ghost is cheap and very useful, just needs exploring imo.
Agree here. I think both units are unexplored, and it is too early to say anything about them.
Well, I have tried both to some extend. Imo the reaper with the splash upgrade is strong, but the build time is so high that I don't think it is really playable. You simply have so little of them and they can't attack air, so playing marines instead is simply much more forgiving. But there may be a use for it.
For the ghost, I haven't tried it against Protoss. Against Terran Mech shock is nice, but not overly powerful because of the lengthy animation and even if you unsiege a few tanks, point is that you still have a hard time overrunning mines and vultures fast enough to emphasize on it. Meanwhile the ghost itself is close to nonexistent in terms of combat value. It has quite less damageoutput vs light than a single unstimmed marine. Against anything that isn't light, it has the exact damage output of a worker... I imagine that it is simply bad against Protoss because even if shock turns out to be good, it is not worth 100extra gas. Else you are again left with a 7range SCV with bonus against light.
Short answear: Because I want to make it more broader and "deeper" compared to how it was in BW. And this desire bites me in the ass.
Why are the other match-ups so insanely good?
Short answear: They are ofc not perfect :p. But they work and are IMO often quite fun. That is a good start at least. TvZ and PvZ can be played in many ways. They can be played as in BW. But they can also be played in other new ways, since both races have new tools they did not have in BW.
And ofc mirror matches are the best. I love them. Makes my life easier. Harder to blame on imbalances ^^
Why is TvP different now from BW?
Lets look at BW:
(Guess what specific final)
Insanely strong Mech + Vessels vs Zealots, Dragoons, and a lot of combat tricks like Shuttle+Zealot drops, Storms. Stasis field, flanking and so on to breach the Terran positions. Later on the Carrier threat.
Generally, Terran was hard to breach early, and "turtled" up a critical mass of Mech units and then pushed. It was ofc possible to be aggressive too. Protoss took bases and wanted to be ahead. Terran had to do something. And so on. Many of you probably know BW better than I do. What do the races have in Starbow they did not have in BW? >>>+ Show Spoiler +
Terran has Reapers, which allows for early scouting + pressure. Orbital command allows for more scans. Banshees for stronger air threat. Dropships can lift up sieged tanks. Medics has Matrix. Vessels have Nerve Jammer for even more area control. Planetary fortress for base defence. Reactor for better production. Marauder as a Bio unit.
Protoss have fragile Stalkers with high dmg output. Can Blink to surpass terrain. Warp in from Warp gates. Sentinels with Safeguard for more offence, Null Wards for more area control. Corsair with anti-gravity to disable Tanks. Chrono boost for better production and better defence. Stronger Cannons. Immortals trying to be Dragoons.
Other main differences: The Shield system is different. (In BW all units did full dmg vs Protoss shields. Vultures were insane vs Archons, and stronger vs Cannons for example..) The economy is different - races need more bases now. Terran too. They must be able to secure a third and forth base much earlier.
In other words, races have more tools at their disposal now compared to BW, and they work in a slightly different economic system, in a different game engine.
Many of the problems come from me trying to make Bio viable, make dis and dat work, promote more "early action", promote more playstyles, promote more harassment potential, less deathball and so on.
What I will do at this point, because its getting late, is to take a slight step back. I will look into the old Starbow file, I will look into the BW values and look how the unit relationships were, how the match-up dynamic can be, and see what tweaks can be made to "even it out" and make it more fun. When in doubt, always consult BW for guidance.
I know many of you suggest new abilities, new units and a lot of other stuff to the races. But I can not advocate enough the importance of simplicity. (I know Roblin talked a lot about this back in the days when he was active in the thread.. Oh, where are you?) BW was built on very simple units. Yet players could do wonderful things with them, and the game was rich, deep and fun. I want to capture that feeling, and if it fails, then I will look for more advanced solutions.
Balance is not the main concern, even though it looks quite Protoss favoured. It is how races win - almost pure Gateway armies can walk into Mech. Tech units feel quite redundant. Select 50 Zealots and move into a sieged position. Walk with Stalkers up and down outside Terran bases, look for a weakness, Blink in on top of Tanks. P can constantly army trade. T can hardly move out. (Unless they do some very early types of aggression it seems like.) T can not defend everything. T must get bases, and it is so easy to deny them as P. Simply put, a good, even and fun dynamic is not reached.
This can ofc be to several problems: Metagame, player skills, maps, build orders or just stats imbalances. It is always hard to pick a needle out of a black hole. But based on the games played the last days/weeks, it does appear to be some kind of unsatisfying pattern, and something must be done. A bad feeling is a bad feeling.
I will return tomorrow with something in mind. (Mostly modificiations to stats, where I will look into BW and the old Starbow file and see how we had it there, before the Marauder experiment started)
For me Zealots have always had one problematic stat. Light! I see the reason why they are light, as it does fill nicely with the idea having each race's core unit be light.
In the case of the zealot through it causes issues i feel, because of the way AOE(The traditional counter to mass Core unit) is balanced. Most light units are rather fragile. Marines are at 45 HP while Zerglings are at 35. AOE units are adjusted with this in mind, They are suposed to have an edge over the light unit but not completely obliterate them.
In comes the Zealot. Light unit with 160 HP. You kinda see how AOE-tools designed to deal with the 35-45 HP units could have some issues dealing with Zealots.
The Hellbat from HOTS is kinda a manifistation of this. Yea that imba bio unit from Factory you know, that completely obliterates Zerglings, marines and workers given the chance? Yea that is what it takes for an anti-light unit to beat zealots headsup. Not much less can do it.
Now i know that Zealots are suposed to be tanky. But from my observation it kinda breaks the system to have a tanky unit and at the same time give it the tag that makes alot of units scale down their damage. Overkill if nothing else. Considering we use the medium tag, i think we might wanna try that out for Zealots. Marauder pushes might give some issues through.
Gossen, nulsphrere is bugged. It can attack immediately after you throw it down.
Solid and I talked a lot on the TvP matchup last night, and I think we agree'd in a lot of ways on most of the metgame/balance issues. Here is what we concluded;
- Zealot/archon + some stalkers (not too many) with relatively quick stasis is by far the stronget protoss unit composition vs mech. - The counter to it is heavy SV play, however, that is not really doable with tanks being 3 supply as your terran mech army will max out on such a small unit count if you have 5-7 Sv's. - Any other kind of unit composition is really weak vs mech, and I expect that if maps gets reworked a bit so terran can more safely defend/secure 3rds and 4th, then we will have to buff protoss's other counter units, so they don't just rely on stasis "abuse". E.g. Using Sentinels hardened shield correctly is a bit challenging, and we could consider giving it +1 casting range on that thing if it turns out most people found it too challenging too use vs goliath/tank compostiions. - Immortals activation thing should probably make it better vs mech. I personally would have prefered some type of x% damage reduction for x seconds instead.
- I wouldn't mind seeing storm being a bit better vs mech. That would require a larger AOE and less damage vs light/normal armor units.
- Kabel, we talked about carriers. I would like to see them as the late late game unit that protoss could tech to once it was on 5+ bases, but the tech would take a long time and thus the protoss would become vulernable to timing attacks in the period. But once a decent amount of carriers came out, it should be very difficult for terran to handle if he has less econ.
- At last, I would like to see a lower detection range of turrets. Atm DT's can't do shit vs mech cus he already has so many turrets set up, due to the threat of dropplay and a relatively spread out army. OC also has 200 energy, it used to have a maximum of 100 before HOTS. It's a bit sad atm that archons are so much superior to DT's and HT's, as the latter two are more fun to use.
Some nice things to say about the matchup and the future dynamic; - Protoss aggression definitely seems heavily rewarded early game atm. Drop play/sentinel openings are clearly optimal from the protoss perspective as they can be aggressive while still having units to defend vs vulture runby's.
- Terran mech is really strong defensively if you don't suicide your vultures to make something happen, as I did. One of the reasons I did play somewhat aggressively with them was due to the fact that my maxed out army isn't that strong. 2 supply tanks will help solve alot of issues.
- With warp tech being quite late tech, I can see stuff like 2 vulture drops + tanks being pretty strong in the midgame. it is a fairly low commitment for the terran and seems more efficient than risking the loss of +10 vultures. This does give the terran a bit of aggression opportunities.
- With maps being more "fair", tanks 2 supply, and a slight buff to protoss's other mech counters (besides Stasis), the matchup looks quite fair (in theory) as protoss will be rewarded for doing other stuff than just a-moving gateway units around the map. If he has to use sentinels well, phase missile Sv's, activate charge and immortal shield, postion stalkers correctly to chase away vulturues, drop immortals/zealots on top of tanks and storm tanks at the same time during a battle, then I believe we managed to create a game with a very high skill cap.
Specific comments regarding maps - I think we should try to set up maps in such a way that if you attack into the 3rd/4th, then you have to go through a relatively narrow passage. I don't like high grounds over natural/3rd as it seems to do a way too good job of preventing any type of aggression in all matchups, while narrow passages does a better job of rewarding defenders advantage for only splash damage units.
- If this goes through, then 3rd and 4th doesn't have to be extremely close to the natual and each other. We can actually make it possible for the terran to spread him self out a bit. When that is said, the two new maps are still too extreme in that regard (even if entrances become more narrow)
-5th on a lot of maps is a bit too hard too secure from my experience. I guess besides Breakout I feel like securing a 5th as a mech player is only doable if opponent is making a mistake and not being active enough on the map. Obv. this will be easier with 2 supply tanks, but still, I believe that it is something that should be looked closely at when picking new maps.
Also, said this before, but the Sbow version of Match Point was brilliant. It had bases that were somewhat hard to secure but doable and it felt fair, if you just spread your self out correctly. Further, you could be on 4-5 bases and actually attack your opponents bases without leaving your self extremely vulernable to counterattacks. This is IMO quite an important area to look at regarding map design, and it is why Starbow Haven doesn't really work for mech.
In that map, even if you manage to secure bases, you have no way of attacking the opponents bases as they are so far away. Thus, I think it should be possible for the terran player to take 4th and 5th's which puts him in a closer position to the opponents bases.
Last thing, I forgot to mention. With Nerve Jammer being nerfed and Stasis being really strong, I wouldn't mind seeing an energy upgrade for Sv's at the techlab. . Often times I found my self without any energy on the SV's, and I don't like the type of games where it goes like: "75/100 energy --> ok can win. "74/99 energy" --> you lose.
On August 09 2013 18:24 MaxViktory wrote: Is there any place where you have written down the stats and abilities of the different units? Like a liquipedia page or something. I am interested.
Also. SV:s seem really strong and annoying so I think they deserve having their max amount of energy as 99 instead of 100.
Ok let me write something small about the movement
1. It becomes hard and clunky to micro 2. It makes it boring
Lets say i have 12lings in a tight formation (they hug each other). I now order them to move to the right, now they stun the movement around 0.5 seconds, this happens regularly and not only when you do the units hugtight
It felt weird with bio and hydras to micro and zerglings and probably everything. I didnt know what it was till days after someone told me about the movement When you drag the units to kite, micro in general it feels very clunky
I cant really express more, its so hard for me I hope u reconsider to really change this for funnier gameplay
I think this match-up can be solved mainly via number tweaks. But before I dig into that will I first look at one basic thing I think PvT is missing atm. (And this prevents the match-up from being good) You can all follow my thought process and interfere as usual.
Lets start with a glimpse on BW, just as a point of reference:
A beautiful chain! Ahhh.. So easy, and yet so interesting! Each of the basic units have some kind of purpose.
And what is the point with this?
Every unit in the game MUST have potential to cause a reaction from the opponent when it enters the battlefield - either a macro or micro reaction. Every unit is suppose to cause a problem for the opponent, or solve a problem caused by the opponent. A unit that never forces a reaction at all is a worthless unit for the gameplay.
Example of a good unit in this regard: Lurkers, they force macro reactions AND micro reactions from the opponent. They can be used to cause problems for the enemy (contain, harass, attack), or to solve problems the enemy is causing. (Defend vs his attacks)
<<<
Ok, well, how does this chain look like in Starbow?
I´m not gonna write it since it is so ugly and messy, and no solid relationship between certain units. >.<
But simply put, PvT is different now compared to BW, especially because Air units are an early part of the meta game. Some units do not even have a role atm, and there are more content to connect with each other and fit into the context. This just has not been sorted out properly, and it IMO causes disturbance in the gameplay.
Two distinct examples:
- Marines are crap vs P. They die vs Stalkers and Zealots, and even vs Sentinels. Almost no point to build them. - When Immortals enter the battlefield, Terran does not really have to care. Just do what you already do and it will work just fine. Even Zealots cause more reactions. (And almost nothing Terran can do makes P feel the need for Immortals. Which at least happens in PvZ and PvP)
Keep in mind that static relationships, like I talked about above, can be changed in combat via for example Matrix, Spider mines, Stimpack, Nullward, Safeguard, Absorb, Blink, Dropplay and of course just micro. For example is an unsieged Tank beaten by a Immortal. With Matrix on the Tank is the relationship suddenly reversed - and this makes it all much more interesting!
And this is nothing new. Just the basics. As it were in BW. But it is IMO not complete in Starbow.
I know there is more to a match-up than a simplified chain like this. But IMO this is the basics: How units interact with each other, what players are able to do with the units, and WHY players need specific units. They are the primary tools we can manipulate to reach a certain game dynamic.
Below is just a reminder of some couple of good things we shall strive for: >>>+ Show Spoiler +
(These are no new things, or no suprises. But we do not have it quite yet in TvP IMO)
- Both races must be able to be aggressive at all stages in the game. As the game progresses, both races must be able to harass, attack, pressure and annoy the opponent with different methods.
- Both races must be able to take and secure bases, since it is such a crucial part of the economy. (Secure and defend to the point where just A-moving with core units is hard to breach a base.)
- A large variety of units should be needed to win the game.
- There must be reasons for players to do something, rather than nothing. Expanding is a fine example of a carrot in the game - you want to expand yourself, while at the same time deny the enemy from expanding. But other "clocks" should be in the game, for example when P starts to tech to Carriers, T really has to act.
I think all of this stuff can be reached with the correct adjustements to units and their relationships.
- With maps being more "fair", tanks 2 supply, and a slight buff to protoss's other mech counters (besides Stasis), the matchup looks quite fair (in theory) as protoss will be rewarded for doing other stuff than just a-moving gateway units around the map. If he has to use sentinels well, phase missile Sv's, activate charge and immortal shield, postion stalkers correctly to chase away vulturues, drop immortals/zealots on top of tanks and storm tanks at the same time during a battle, then I believe we managed to create a game with a very high skill cap
.
I agree. If we manage to reach something like this, I will be very pleased. And this is connected to the stuff I´ve talked about above - players must be rewarded for mixing in different types of units, and the units themselfes must help players to do something they can not do otherwise. If pure basic Gateway units + Arbiters is good vs everything Terran can do, the game will feel stale, since there is no reason for P to do anything else.
I spent parts of the yesterday on evaluating different solutions, "research", testing stuff in the editor, and I will continue today. I will aim to make as few changes as possible. Finalize the roles of units. Make them be connected to each other in as many aspects as possible - at different game phases, stats, production capability and so on. To ensure the context becomes more healthy.
Ps. Ofc perfect balance will not be reached. It is more to make sure the fundamentals of the match-up becomes better, so we then after moar games can do further balance adjustements. (If necessary, which it probably will be ^^ )
I wanna write something to what u just wrote kabel
I am an veteran broodwar player so i know alot of stuff in that game
First thing first
Marines and medics beats zealots/stalkers very easy They melt them
So what protoss needed to do was to go for aoe. Hightemplars, Reavers
This was the reason terran did not go bio vs protoss, cuz they have no chance against those things You say zealot > marine. I dont know where u got that from? Small numbers probably?
Iam not sure what the relationship is in small numbers and to be frank, i dont really know the relationship only marines against zealots in broodwar But i do know that in sc2 zealot > marine in small numbers if they amove against each other
But after a while a "critical" mass comes into the picture and now marines > zealots equal cost and supply and amove without upgrades. I believe the "critical" mass arrives around 20marines + So the higher the number of marines and zealots (still equal cost and supply and amove) the more effective the marines win, everything without any upgrades
maybe the same thing applies to broodwar. Now when i look at your post, you didnt mention the medic at all so maybe i wrote this for nothing now? Iam sorry if that is the case
Some more things
How is the thing with movement going? Have u discussed it? Do u know about the carrier micro in broodwar? And now in sc2:hots to You still work on design first and balance later?
Would you like my help if i can help?
As of right now i feel Terran can secure bases, terran can harass, terran can be agressive thorughout the game, you feel the reverse or?
Yea I did not mention all the units, only the basic ones. And I did simplify it a bit. Those relationships I´ve talked about are affected by a lot of stuff, for example a critical mass of Marines will beat Zealots. Just as a critical mass of Hydras will also beat Zealots. But what I mean is that some units in Starbow TvP do not feel like they have a role or purpose atm.
How is the thing with movement going? Have u discussed it?
I´ve talked with Decemberscalm about it. (He is the one who has built and modified the system.) He can try to improve it, but he needs to know more specific what the problems are. If you think it is hard to explain in a long post, upload a replay where you just move around with stuff and make small comments in the ingame chat.
Do u know about the carrier micro in broodwar? And now in sc2:hots to
It is suppose to be implemented already. (So Carriers can move without the Interceptors immediately flying back home again.) If it does not work, please tell me, since I have not actually thought about it.
You still work on design first and balance later?
I do not have anything more to design. All the spells and units feel "good enough" in theory to be in the game. It is maybe not perfect, but there is not more I can do now. I will aim to make the match-up dynamics better and make sure the balance is decent. And for that I will make mostly number modifications. Maybe some small changes in the way some abilities work etc. Maybe replace some upgrades I am doubtful about.
The only design problem I have left is the Marauder. It just feels very odd the way it is in the game atm. It does not feel useful in any match-up. Other Terran units can already do what it does, or can do with slight modifications.
I am looking at different solutions to it. I even considering replacing it with a modified version of the Firebat. But I will write more about it later.
Would you like my help if i can help?
The best way you and everyone can help me atm is to play. Explore the game. See what works. See how it feels. Give feedback. Show replays.
I aim to make one more patch with large fixes.
After that will patches I make have only bug fixes and balance modifications. Not replace abilities, units or anything.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/N4H2JQK.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/lxGbVEy.png)
